


Sublimation

by Cheryl_Lyn_Bentley



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Established Relationship, Is Wanting To Get Railed By An Evil Scientist A Kink, Kink Discovery, M/M, Morning After, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28357056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheryl_Lyn_Bentley/pseuds/Cheryl_Lyn_Bentley
Summary: Zenkichi catches Takuto dragging a smoke the morning after sex. It goes downhill for him.
Relationships: Hasegawa Zenkichi/Maruki Takuto
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Sublimation

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even like smoking or find smoking sexy. But here you go. Some adult shit. What the hell. Smoking is dangerous to your health. Don't do it. If you can't, then moderate it with a shitty brand. Heard it helps.

Understandably, Takuto usually woke up later in the morning after. Zenkichi almost felt sorry if not for the luxury of time he availed in getting to see his lover’s relaxed face and the aftermath of his biting without the other being conscious.

But one day, unlike any other, he chanced on Takuto already awake, still in bed sitting up and languidly huffing away a cigarette. Zenkichi should be annoyed in having to smell nicotine so early in his own bed, but there’s something about seeing Takuto’s profile cast against the early morning light that quieted his protest on the matter. He looked cold, distant, and ruthless, the way his hair was brushed back and away from his unspectacled doe eyes, his stern furrowed brow, his half-parted lips staying on the cigarette clutched between his fingers as countless thoughts wrote before his eyes like lines in a journal page. He exhaled— white, poisonous feathers of smoke pushed past his lips in a controlled, purposeful breath as if to put words in a sobered order.

Whether it was the haze of sleep or the second-hand smoke making him see this cool, melancholic side of his lover, Zenkichi didn’t want to be woken out of it. If Takuto intended to finish one stick, so be it.

Unfortunately, the intensity of his stare resulted to an impulsive glance from the other, who immediately jerked out of his reverie. “H-how long have you been awake?!” He fumbled to catch the cigarette that fell from his hands and luckily saved the sheets from being singed. “Sorry! Putting it out!”

And as easy as a blink’s eye the menacing conspirator was gone, and his wide-eyed, simple-minded lover was back in place. Takuto stumbled out of bed despite being in pain to stump the cigarette in the bathroom. He kept apologizing as he dressed like his life depended on it, not knowing that Zenkichi’s stunned silence leaned more towards awe than anger.

* * *

Despite having the time to catch up in reprimanding Takuto while he made his and Akane’s Monday bento, the majority of his headspace revolved around the imagery of light outlining Takuto’s lashes and the curling wisps of smoke leaving his mouth. Nevermind that Takuto outright violated one of his most important house rules, he shouldn’t have looked like a cool yet jaded lover from an adult novel.

The smoke break at the back of the office building didn’t make his frazzled thoughts flow easier. He was wanting something only Takuto could give and it was neither a drink nor an endorphin rush on triumphing a low-level debate about justifiable cognitive dissonance. The feathery wisps of grey smoke illuminated by pale sunlight and Takuto’s lips and distant gaze haunted him through the blanket of second-hand smoke that didn’t smell the same as that morning.

“What the hell…” He fumbled to get a stick out of his scrunched out carton of cigarettes and threw away the emptied box in satisfaction. He couldn’t find the words to describe what he saw that time but it felt similar to being put down with anesthesia and experiencing moments of religious ecstasy.

Whether he was feeling an epiphany or an arousal that had nothing to do with sex, he had to find a name to know what he’s dealing with or else work will flay him and his subordinates alive.

He ended up stubbing the cigarette he didn’t get to light in the first place.

“This is gonna be a long week.”

He couldn’t wait until Thursday.

* * *

Zenkichi pulled through the week until Crossroads night. It was the perfect opportunity to confront Takuto about… whatever he was feeling about him. Thankfully, the nosy reporter that frequented the place was absent and Lala-chan allowed him a space for two in the bar up front. Takuto arrived on time enough for his glass of whiskey to remain untouched.

As soon as he got his order of rum-cola and exchanged pleasantries, the opportunity to present the moment of truth finally managed to insert itself.

“You wanted to talk about something?”

“Yeah, about that morning...” Zenkichi took a deep breath and looked at him eye to eye. “When I caught you smoking.”

“Oh…” Takuto hung his head. “It’s just… My mind was running a mile a minute and I couldn’t go back to sleep so I lit a stick. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! I’ll…”

“I’m not mad. Not even disappointed, actually. That’s the problem, I think.”

“I know, it’s bad that—” Takuto opened his mouth to say another apology until he processed the reply. “Come again?”

Zenkichi tried not to bounce his leg and ended up scraping his ankle against the chair instead. “Agh, the hell do I explain this?” He gulped a mouthful of the whisky as if the sting of the liquor could help find the words. “You looked… different that morning. Not that it’s a bad thing…”

“Different, how?”

“You didn’t look… cute like… the way you are!” He gestured flippantly at him from top to toe. “You looked sexy but in a casual…way. Like, ‘I just wanna look’… Something like that.”

Takuto blushed pink, stammering weakly as he clutched his drink and forced himself to fixate on the perspiration of the glass. “But you’ve seen me naked so many times. How was that morning different?”

“Fuck me! I don’t know?! You looked sexy but not in a ‘I wanna fuck you to the ground tonight’ kind of way!”

From the corner of his eye, Lala-chan put a hand on her chest to denote shock, and her two customers turned their heads to acknowledge the overheard outburst. But Zenkichi had gone beyond the public embarrassment threshold to mind his volume and was on his way to blame the alcohol he hadn’t touched yet. Takuto thankfully has his back to them to spare him the additional embarrassment. “A-and the problem is…?”

“The problem is…” Zenkichi grinded his teeth and gave up trying to choose his words correctly. “The problem is I want to see that side of you again, but… Dammit! It’s not right to think of you like that when you’re probably having a serious monologue with yourself.” He rambled on, clutching at his hair as if it would help him. “You’re coping with anxiety while here I am jacking off to your face!”

“Ermm… Thank you…? Though I wasn’t monologuing or anything like that.” Takuto beamed a sheepish smile. “I was just thinking how to cut the vegetables for you and Akane’s bento.”

It can’t get any worse. “WHAT?! You weren’t angsting?! Then is that what you really look like when you’re not putting up your cute façade?!”

Takuto did his best to keep their conversation from spiraling out of control even though Zenkichi looked like he was sinking into the quicksand of exasperation and laughable despair. “Maybe? I don’t know, I don’t look in the mirror when I’m alone. But I’m going to think about it…”

“Oh no! Now you’re gonna be conscious of your face every time you’re alone.”

“Oh no…”

“Ah shit. I made things worse…” Zenkichi downed his glass, guzzling the liquor in one gulp and heaving the weariest groan a man his age was able to bother. “Lala-chan, I’ll have another whisky!”

“Another Cuban for me, and two sandwiches if you have them.” Takuto raised his hand, still looking like the most dignified man in the room despite the status of his sex life inadvertently put on blast. “You’re not planning to get wasted aren’t you?”

“Leave me to my misery, tanuki. I jacked off to your face the other day instead of lighting a smoke!”

“Pull yourself together, we’ll figure this out. I used to be a psychiatrist, remember? Please,” Takuto poked at his sullen shoulders. “I can’t laugh at you when you’re drunk like this.”

Zenkichi downed his second glass and miserably planted his face on the bar table.

* * *

He managed to convince himself to stop at the third glass of whiskey and allowed Takuto to lead the way. While not fully intoxicated, he was having the inability to see straight lines and his recall of the morning scene had started to blur. Takuto took him to his own studio apartment in Kichijoji, which looked more like a matching, simple extension of his residence save for various plants and cacti decorating the space. He led him to his twin-sized bed and pulled his shoes off in a practiced tug.

“I’d rather not have Akane see you like this again. I called to let her know you’ll be home by morning.”

“Will we ever get married? I mean,” Zenkichi couldn’t stop himself as the question was already out by the tip of his tongue. “Do you want to get married?”

“Do we have to?” Takuto deflected. “Come on, you have to change clothes.”

When he stepped closer to tug off his tie, Zenkichi couldn’t resist pulling him down to his level and catching his lips with his. The taste of cola, mayonnaise, and nicotine in his lover’s tongue had an amusing dichotomy that made him want more of his chilly presence. Takuto’s lashes fluttered, a soft moan teased from his throat as he surrendered to the insistent arm wrapped around his waist. He was able to seat him on his lap, enjoying the squeeze of his lovers’ thighs and his ass in easy reach. He chuckled when Takuto whimpered and pulled away from the kiss when his hand started groping just above his thighs. “What if we reenact it? That morning after…”

“I thought what you felt about me was something ‘beyond horny’.” Takuto cleared his throat and continued his attempts to take his tie off. “You just want an excuse to fuck me again.”

“Agh, why are you so damn attractive anyway?” Zenkichi leaned back and kept complaining about whatever he could, his eyes, his mouth, how noisy and demanding he gets during sex, and being god’s gift to women. At the end of his tirade, he looped back into his exasperation since Crossroads and collapsed on his back, depriving Takuto the chance to take off his dress shirt. “I dunno exactly, but I want to see that face again.”

“Unfortunately I don’t know what ‘that’ is. Maybe I should volunteer you as a Mobius subject. I kept tabs on an experimental psycho-lobotomy study recently.” Takuto remained perched on his lap. “The methodology requires your brain to be plugged into an experimental virtual reality system patterned after your psychosis.”

Zenkichi was on the verge of blanking out the moment Takuto started speaking words with more than three syllables. No matter how actively he tried to keep up with his medical talk, he knew a rabbit hole when he sensed one. “Uh, sure…”

“The system will profile your mental patterns and immerse you into the simulation based on your core memories.” Takuto’s eyes fell half-lidded as he crawled above him until his crotch pressed against his. The blush in his cheeks were strangely absent as he grinned. “Perhaps I’d be able to understand your feelings myself if you’d just give me your brain. I’d love to know what’s on your mind. I need to know how this old wolf managed to make me fall in love with him.”

The low, threatening drawl of his voice finally cracked a bright epiphany in Zenkichi’s sobering mind. “THAT’S IT!” He jumped up and cupped his face. “THAT’S THE SEXY LOOK THAT GOT ME!”

Takuto held on to his arms, wide-eyed and disturbed from his sudden outburst. “W-what?! What look?! The what now?”

“Keep talking about cutting out my brain! Oh my god, please keep talking…”

Takuto stared out vaguely until he sighed and closed his eyes. “Oh… no. I think I know what you’re describing. Which part of me you saw.” He eased off his lap and rolled on his side. “Attractive isn’t what I’d call this… other face.”

Now Zenkichi felt sobered up. “Why not?”

“It’s… I’m a medical researcher, remember? Being apathetic and detached to our patients in service of study is integral to my line of work. Keeping an objective point of view at all times includes trivializing the subject’s perspective.” Takuto looked uncomfortable than embarrassed as he continued to explain himself. “ _That_ part of me that gets excited to use a metaphorical scalpel. Cooking and driving takes my mind off it.”

Zenkichi stared at him in speechless silence. Without waiting for a reaction, Takuto moved out of the bed and changed out of his own clothes. Uneasy with the sudden silence between them, Zenkichi tried to salvage what he could from the mood. “Oh. That’s… wow. Uhm… I know I should take you seriously but you looked so cool.”

“That can’t be all there is to it when you tried to get hammered tonight.” Takuto threw him a shirt and a pair of boxers. “Change your clothes and let’s just sleep.”

But Zenkichi didn’t move and set the clothes aside. “I just wanna know why that look affected me so much and what you were thinking. I mean, I’ve seen you smoke so many times but I’ve never caught you looking like that.”

Takuto put up an unbothered and apathetic façade to mask his obvious embarrassment on the matter. “I try not to make my private thoughts show up in public.” He crossed his arms, his eyes avoiding him the entire time he stood before him like an overbearing wife. “Go to sleep.”

“I’m not saying I want to see it more often, I was just thinking if you would… ermm… I would like you to…” Zenkichi pressed his knees together and placed his hands on his lap to be polite but his voice withered at the last second, because the current expression on Takuto’s face looked serious and stern. “Fuck me.”

A beat and a half was all it took for Takuto to break his façade again. “Sorry?”

“I said I want you to fuck me.” He said again, louder, staring at him eye to eye despite the flushed heat of embarrassment blurring his vision.

Though Takuto was finally looking at him, the confused exasperated mood from Crossroads was back again. “But why?! I thought you didn’t feel like fucking me?”

“I meant I want you to fuck me.” The image of him blushing to his ears while he’s sitting in the bed of another man asking him for a fuck was not lost to his sense of dignity. “I know what I said!”

“Y-you don’t find me unnerving?” Takuto’s voice pitched to a murmur the more things he admitted to deter the determined glimmer in his eyes. “I was getting off to talking about giving up your brain to a pseudoscientific community.”

“Maybe I want you to fuck me like I’m your science experiment.” Zenkichi unfolded his legs and leaned back, making sure to expose his neck which his half unbuttoned shirt inadvertently allowed. “Show me. I want to see how _unnerving_ you are when you don’t care.”

Takuto finally stepped forward and reached for his face, clasping his jaw and pressing his thumb against his bottom lip with the eagerness of a madman given a chance. Zenkichi tried to quiet the click of his throat as a glimpse of something inhuman and empty lurked in Takuto’s dilated pupils. “I’ll have you undone.” He grinned with too much teeth. “I’ll take you apart until you can’t see where your body ends and mine begins.”

A thrilling chill coursed up his spine that overrode the heat of the alcohol pumping in his blood.

Takuto had more eyes than he should have.

“Do me.”

* * *

Zenkichi woke up, wrung out, hoarse, and thoroughly ravaged by his lover. He was absolutely thankful the other man had interfered his plans on getting wasted because there was no way he could get up with the combination of a hangover and a sore ass. He carefully pushed himself up and wrinkled his nose at the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke already assaulting his senses.

“Do you want painkillers?” Takuto’s gentle voice made him shudder like his body remembered to whom the sound belonged to. “I have them prepared for you by the table.”

Zenkichi groaned out a curse as his aching muscles pulsed when he tried to lie on his side to retrieve his glasses by the bedside. “You’re gonna burn the bed one day.” He forced the warning despite his dry throat. “But eh, your problem.”

“Smoking slows me down. You know those times when you’re thinking about ten people at once with all the things they said and the words you needed to type on the phone? It’s like that, and it makes me dizzy.” Takuto looked the way he saw him that day— pale lit skin, slicked back hair, pensive eyes and languid smoke curling in the air. His voice was low and somber, completing the bittersweet emotion Zenkichi could finally give a name to.

“Is there anything I can do to help? Smoking’s bad for your health in the long run.”

“You’re here. You love me for what I am.” Takuto smiled, not quite reaching his eyes. “You make me sober, not distracted.”

Zenkichi couldn’t pick through the storm of questions rattling in his mind and found himself settling for a disappointing one that wouldn’t throw him into another week of internal crisis. “Is this how you feel every morning after I fuck you? Feels like you ran me off the sidewalk and tapped my ass with your taxi at top speed.”

Takuto contently laughed, dark, reserved and low-pitched. He angled the cigarette away from his face as he leaned close to tuck away a lock of hair behind his ear. “I’m truly sorry. I thought I’d let you know how passionate I can be.” The way his mouth curled as he grinned looked threatening at hindsight, but Zenkichi knew what it meant for him. “Maybe next week, I’ll let us have all the time in the world to open up your virgin ass for me.”

“Oh god,” Zenkichi grabbed a pillow and held it to himself like a barrier. He was thankful that a quick glance from Takuto confirmed that he was staring at one pair of human eyes. “Let’s go home before I beg you to fuck me again.”

“Of course, my dearest. Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Julian and Angel:** wish I was that dude >:(


End file.
